I felt more depressed than ever before. In line with Chinese tradition, firecrackers flared all around us. The whole village was celebrating. We felt lonely and discouraged. It had been six and a half years since I stopped going to school. I had neither prospects for the future nor a house to live in. Worst of all, we had left my little brother behind, possibly forever. I missed him terribly and thought of him often. It was during those instants where I felt a pure hatred toward my “stepdad.” Sometimes he made me hate him so much that I just wanted to kill him with my own two hands.
* * *
The next day, we took the bus toward Dalian. Mom returned right away to the old couple she had worked for. They still needed her help, since the old man’s condition was deteriorating. And so she got back to work immediately. But I had already had enough of this city. I wanted to get as far away as possible, I felt stifled there. Keumsun had left us a cell phone number. I called her from a phone booth.
“I’m coming to Shanghai. I can’t stand it here anymore.”
One week after my return to Dalian, I was on my way again, headed south. I left my mom behind, and I hoped that in this strange and mysterious new city a new, more pleasant chapter would unfold in my life.
After reaching the Shanghai station, I follow Keumsun’s instructions to find her at her workplace. This city was nothing like Dalian. It was a labyrinth that felt even more immense, with narrow streets swarming with people, and it was very dirty. Finally, I found myself in front of a Korean supermarket. It was there that Keumsun had found a job as a cashier. She worked so hard that she didn’t even have time to come pick me up at the station. But I was extremely happy to see her again. After a few minutes of catching up, I realized that she was getting along quite well here, and she shared a room with a coworker.
Later, when the store was a little less hectic, Keumsun told me she had had a hard time at first, when she got here, without any friends or family with her. She did not have enough money to survive without a job. With no better options, she spent several nights sleeping at the station like a hobo. But here there were opportunities for employment if you were willing to look for them. She gave me tips on how to find a job here as well. The first step was to obtain some fake papers for myself. To my great surprise, I discovered that nothing was easier than forging identification in this city. There were flyers everywhere advertising fake IDs for a mere hundred yuan (less than fifteen dollars). All you had to do was call the number on the flyer, bring a photo—and of course some money—and before you knew it, you had a fake residency permit. At the time, ID cards were very rudimentary and it was quite easy to fake them.
In Shanghai, a residency permit, even if it was a fake, opened doors. I quickly landed myself a job as a waitress in a restaurant run by South Koreans. My working conditions were much better than they had been at the bakery, and my coworkers were very nice to me. Little by little, I started to find my niche within the city, largely thanks to my sister.
But one day, four months after I arrived, Keumsun looked simultaneously excited and rueful. She told me, “Mom called. She tried to go back to the farm again, to see Chang Qian … but it went badly. She wants to come join us.”
And so we were all once more reunited. My mother also obtained some false papers when she got here, and the three of us moved together into a room.
* * *
In the anonymity of this city in the middle of an economic boom, we started a new life. Keumsun was the first one to be able to take care of herself. She even fell in love with a Chinese boy. I wasn’t quite that at ease here just yet, but I became acquainted with the culture of South Korea thanks to my work in the restaurant. It was my first time making contact with our “enemies” to the south, and it went rather well. They spoke Korean with a different accent, but they ate the same things we do. We could understand each other. Growing up, I was taught in school that South Korea was “the puppet regime of the imperialist Americans,” and that it was preparing to invade us at any moment. In Shanghai, for the first time, I was able to form my own opinions. I started to watch South Korean television shows. Over time, I became a fan of South Korean dramas, discovered K-pop, and even became a fan of artists who have become stars in China. I will remember forever the first CD I ever bought.
Our material living conditions were also steadily growing better and better. My mother too found a job of her own. She started working as a housemaid again, this time for two South Korean expatriates who shared a big house. They were very generous and rather pleased to find an employee who spoke their language. There, Mom made eighteen hundred yuan per month, just a bit over two hundred dollars—not bad at all. Whenever they left to go back to South Korea during their vacations, her bosses gave us the keys so that we could stay at their place. What luxury! Especially in comparison to the slums that we had been living in for seven years. One day, the day before the Seollal, the Korean New Year, they even gave us a hundred-dollar bill before boarding the plane for South Korea.
* * *
Little by little, I started to dream about going to South Korea. In Shanghai, thanks to the South Koreans who treated us so nicely, I rediscovered my roots, my native language, and formed a clearer picture of the world. But I couldn’t study, nor hope to find a good job, as long I was here illegally. I didn’t want to be an illegal resident, or to live with fake identification, for the rest of my life. Here, we still lived in constant fear of getting arrested. In South Korea, I would finally be able to live my life in the open. Maybe I could even start going to school again. I learned that in South Korea, the government granted South Korean citizenship to all escapees from North Korea, as long as you could prove that you weren’t a spy.
The only issue was getting there. The Chinese police closely monitor the South Korean embassy and consulates. It was impossible to go through that route. The only thing we could do was travel through another country to get to our promised land. But how could we do that without passports?
* * *
Eventually, we learned that there were smuggling rings that could get people to South Korea. But you had to pay, and pay a lot. And how were we to make contact with any of these smugglers?
A friend and colleague of ours clandestinely gave us the phone number of a smuggler. In 2006, summoning up all my courage, I called this mysterious number. A brusque masculine voice answered. It told me the conditions of the deal: twenty thousand yuan (almost twenty-five hundred dollars) per head, to be paid in cash in China, and then the same to be paid by credit card once we made it to Seoul. It was a huge sum of money for us. I asked him for details.
“Where will we pass through? Is it dangerous? Are we sure to arrive at the right place?”
The questions just flowed from my mouth. But the man was not very talkative and did not want to engage in conversation. He obviously didn’t want to stay on the line any longer than absolutely necessary. His answers were very vague. The only thing he was clear about was the price. However, he added that in a few days, one group would be leaving and that if we wanted to join them, we had to make a decision soon. Very, very soon.
I hung up, troubled.
For this offer, the options were either to take it or leave it, with little information and no guarantee of success. And all the risks involved were ours.
For three days, we thought things through. Were we ready to risk everything again? To hit the road once again and give up the comfort that we had finally been able to enjoy for two years in Shanghai? Did we still dare to run the risk of getting arrested at the border and then getting sent back to the hell that is North Korea? Furthermore, the smuggler had seemed a bit sketchy. When we talked to him again on the phone, he asked us for even more money.
Keumsun was hesitant. She decided to remain in China. She did not want to be separated from her boyfriend.
* * *
But this time, I was determined. I decided that I was going to leave and hope for better things in South Korea. And seeing how determined I was, my mom decided to come with me. Maybe she just didn’t want me to go alone. It was an all or nothing decision. The year was 2006, and it had been nine years that we had been wandering all over. My mom and I did not want to spend the rest of our lives trembling at the idea of getting arrested and once again being sent back to a country that wasn’t exactly going to welcome us with open arms. We wanted to have a future, a real future. So we saved up as much money as we could, and told the smuggler that we would accept his deal. I told my boss that I had to quit my waitress job, without giving him any details, and he didn’t ask for any. I think he understood the situation.
Over the phone, the smuggler left me private instructions: make your way to the Mongolian border, where you will meet us.
It was the last step before reaching paradise … or another living hell.